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Night Poem From Khandro
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Voices
Ideal voices, the beloved voices of those who have died or of those who are lost to us as if they were dead.
Sometimes they speak to us in dreams; sometimes, in thought, the mind hears them.
And with their sounds for a moment return sounds from our life's first poetry - like music at night, far off, fading out.
C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933)
Translated from Greek by Avi Sharon
Ideal voices, the beloved voices of those who have died or of those who are lost to us as if they were dead.
Sometimes they speak to us in dreams; sometimes, in thought, the mind hears them.
And with their sounds for a moment return sounds from our life's first poetry - like music at night, far off, fading out.
C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933)
Translated from Greek by Avi Sharon
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Wonderful Khandro x
Night Thoughts
........................
O let me gaze! - Of gazing there's no end.
O let me think! - Thought too is wilder'd here;
In mid-way flight Imagination tires;
Yet soon re-prunes her wings to soar anew,
Her point unable to forbear, or gain;
So great the pleasure, so profound the plan!
A banquet this, where men, and angels, meet,
Eat the same manna, mingle earth and heaven.
How distant some of these nocturnal suns!
So distant, (says the sage,) 'twere not absurd
To doubt, if beams, set out at Nature's birth,
Are yet arriv'd at this so foreign world;
Though nothing half so rapid as their flight.
An eye of awe and wonder let me roll,
And roll for ever: Who can satiate sight
In such a scene? in such an ocean wide
Of deep astonishment? where depth, height, breadth,
Are lost in their extremes; and where to count
The thick-sown glories in this field of fire,
Perhaps a seraph's computation fails.
No, go, Ambition! boast thy boundless might
In conquest, o'er the tenth part of a grain.
Edward Young (1688 - 1765)
Written after the death of his wife and other family members.
Night Thoughts
........................
O let me gaze! - Of gazing there's no end.
O let me think! - Thought too is wilder'd here;
In mid-way flight Imagination tires;
Yet soon re-prunes her wings to soar anew,
Her point unable to forbear, or gain;
So great the pleasure, so profound the plan!
A banquet this, where men, and angels, meet,
Eat the same manna, mingle earth and heaven.
How distant some of these nocturnal suns!
So distant, (says the sage,) 'twere not absurd
To doubt, if beams, set out at Nature's birth,
Are yet arriv'd at this so foreign world;
Though nothing half so rapid as their flight.
An eye of awe and wonder let me roll,
And roll for ever: Who can satiate sight
In such a scene? in such an ocean wide
Of deep astonishment? where depth, height, breadth,
Are lost in their extremes; and where to count
The thick-sown glories in this field of fire,
Perhaps a seraph's computation fails.
No, go, Ambition! boast thy boundless might
In conquest, o'er the tenth part of a grain.
Edward Young (1688 - 1765)
Written after the death of his wife and other family members.
Prayer
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
Carol Ann Duffy
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
Carol Ann Duffy
The last few lines from Shakespeare's 29th Sonnet do it for me, especially the last two. It was read at my son's funeral.
//Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
https:/
//Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
https:/
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